R. D. Laing Quotes

Quotes about:

• Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

  R. D. Laing

  Depression, Crazy, Insane World

  104 Copy quote

• They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

  R. D. Laing

  Games, Play, Break

  RD Laing (2012). “Selected Works of RD Laing: Knots”, p.5, Routledge

  22 Copy quote

• The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

  R. D. Laing

  Change, Learning, Knowledge

  Attributed in: "Educating Christians" by Jack Lee Seymour, Margaret Ann Crain, Joseph V. Crockett, (p. 53), 1993.

  35 Copy quote

• Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.

  R. D. Laing

  Pain, Life Is, This Life

  57 Copy quote

• Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth.

  R. D. Laing

  Lying, Deceiving, Capacity

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

  47 Copy quote

• Do not adjust your mind, the fault is in reality.

  R. D. Laing

  Reality, Mind, Faults

  61 Copy quote

• The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.

  R. D. Laing

  Children, Learning, Men

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

  62 Copy quote

• We have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.

  R. D. Laing

  Love, Sentimental, Realizing

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

  63 Copy quote

• If you have passion for what you do, the company you keep, the life you live, it will be reflected in whatever you create. Passion is like that; it springs out, jumps, unpredictable and unplanned, into everything we touch. If it doesn't, others know. Passion can't be faked and it can't be manufactured. Which is why it is so priceless.

  R. D. Laing

  Spring, Passion, Company You Keep

  71 Copy quote

• A child born today in the United Kingdom stands a ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university ... This can be taken as an indication that we are driving our children mad more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps it is our way of educating them that is driving them mad.

  R. D. Laing

  Children, Taken, Mad

  "The Politics of Experience". Book by Ronald David Laing, p. 58, 1967.

  72 Copy quote

• If I do not know that I do not know, I think I know.
  If I do not know that I know, I think I do not know.

  R. D. Laing

  Thinking, Knows, Ifs

  RD Laing (2012). “Selected Works of RD Laing: Knots”, p.35, Routledge

  8 Copy quote

• Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

  R. D. Laing

  Life, Success, Sexually Transmitted Diseases

  36 Copy quote

• What we call "normal" is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection, and other forms of destructive actions on experience...It is radically estranged from the structure of being.

  R. D. Laing

  Depression, Denial, Normal

  32 Copy quote

• Insanity is a perfectly natural adjustment to a totally unnatural and negative environment.

  R. D. Laing

  Insanity, Independence, Negative

  41 Copy quote

• True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality... and through this death a rebirth and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.

  R. D. Laing

  Reality, Self, Ego

  47 Copy quote

• The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.

  R. D. Laing

  Spiritual, Thinking, Shapes

  Attributed in: "Educating Christians" by Jack Lee Seymour, Margaret Ann Crain, Joseph V. Crockett, (p. 53), 1993.

  27 Copy quote

• Where can you scream? It's a serious question: where can you go in society and scream?

  R. D. Laing

  Serious, Scream

  30 Copy quote

• I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men.

  R. D. Laing

  Men, Experience, Invisible

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

  9 Copy quote

• Psychological breakdowns are actually breakthroughs to enlightenment.

  R. D. Laing

  Enlightenment, Psychological, Breakthrough

  25 Copy quote

• Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.

  R. D. Laing

  Love, Life, Psychology

  52 Copy quote

• Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things. If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive. If our experience is destroyed, we have lost our own selves.

  R. D. Laing

  Self, Way, Behavior

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

  17 Copy quote

• Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.

  R. D. Laing

  Insane World, Break Through, Insanity

  'The Politics of Experience' (1967) ch. 6

  47 Copy quote

• No one has the answer: we are answer and question.

  R. D. Laing

  Answers

  24 Copy quote

• Our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities.

  R. D. Laing

  Betrayal, Abdication, Normal

  44 Copy quote

• We all live under the constant threat of our own annihilation. Only by the most outrageous violation of ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own destruction.

  R. D. Laing

  Civilization, Driven, Destruction

  35 Copy quote

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